Gallica Digital Library

From Intellogist

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Introduction

Gallica is a digital library that "provides access to all media: print (monographs, periodicals and newspapers) in image mode and text mode, manuscripts, sound recordings, graphic materials, maps and plans."[1] The site is funded by the National Library of France (Bibliotheque nacionale de France). Documents and materials hosted in Gallica are "royalty-free or whose rights have been negotiated with rights holders, digitized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, through its programs of mass digitization and / or backup."[1] Gallica also indexes the bibliographic data of resources from the collections of partnering institutions "selected for their complementary scientific and technical compatibility with the collections of the BnF."[1] Finally, Gallica links to "collections of copyrighted material, provided by commercial partners of the BNF and accessible on their website, under the conditions set by each of them."[1] Text on Gallica is originally in French, so users should use a translation product like Google Translate to translate the website into the language of their choice. All quotes taken from this site are translated from French into English.

Use

Users can browse or search the site by media format, including Books, Manuscripts, Maps, Images, Periodicals, Sound recordings, and Scores. Users can utilize the quick search form at the top of the page, where they can select which document type to search by, or they can use the advanced search form. The advanced search form allows users to search through multiple fields (selected by drop-down menu), and they can combine the search terms by Boolean operators. The advanced search form also allows users to sort results (by Relevance, Author, Title, etc), filter results (by languages, publishing year, document type, text mode, theme, "source/origin of digital documents," "physical location of documents," listed date, or access method.) Finally, the advanced search form (and the bottom of the homepage) provides lists of "Most popular documents," "Recent additions," "The latest blog posts," and a cloud of the most popular search terms.

In the search results list, users can further refine their searches by multiple criteria (Type of document, Author, Publication date, Language, Theme, etc.) through a vertical menu bar on the left side of the results. If the search result has multiple volumes or issues, the user is given a link to "Go to all issues of this periodical" or "See all volume of the same set." Users can manually page through the document when they select the full record view of the resource.